


We’ll Get Lost Together

by echoinautumn (maybetwice)



Category: Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, M/M, Marriage, Slash, Weddings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-26
Updated: 2013-05-26
Packaged: 2017-12-13 01:55:04
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,589
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/818593
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/maybetwice/pseuds/echoinautumn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Bones moved to Riverside, he made no secret of his failed marriage. Nearing a year after his arrival, Jim sets out to finally heal him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	We’ll Get Lost Together

**Author's Note:**

> For [](http://paytofay.livejournal.com/profile)[**paytofay**](http://paytofay.livejournal.com/), who was the one to point out to me months ago that Iowa is the only Midwestern state to have legalized gay marriage. Kudos to her for the awesome idea/prompt, huge thanks to [](http://hollycomb.livejournal.com/profile)[](http://hollycomb.livejournal.com/)**hollycomb** for answering my insane questions about Georgia (that aren’t even as apparent in this /fail). Google, Wikipedia, and the CDC were liberally used for other research.

*

Summer comes hard in Riverside, with heat and rain; the floods from the years before too near in memory for anyone to forget how fast a summer storm can turn bad. Crops don’t die of droughts so much anymore, not with modern irrigation and attentive care from every farmer within a hundred miles, but too much rain and humidity can kill anything. It's the people that the summer affects more than the plants, though. Jim's had eighteen years and some change to get used to summers in Iowa, so it's just as easy for him to tuck his hands in his jeans and turn his face to the sun and accept the yearly sunburns and tanned skin along with calluses from working the fields with Doc Brannon. He's a summer boy at heart, flourishing in the dead, heavy heat like spring flowers in April rain.

The thermometer outside the bookshop in downtown Riverside has been broken for years, but the old lady who minds the shop hasn't cared enough to change it, even when it's showcased seventy degrees no matter what the weather is actually like. The bell on the door is broken, too, but it gives a half-hearted jangle when he opens the door and shivers at the blast of cold air. The air conditioning is the only thing the old lady has bothered to fix, but Jim suspects that has more to do with her sullen summer help than any personally vested interest in staying cool for the summer.

Leonard McCoy showed up last September with a dusty car with a broken radiator and the same scowl he wore all year round, in snowstorms and sunshine alike. He'd applied for a substitute position with the local school system just in time to take over for Mrs. Coleman when she left on maternity leave and decided to stay at home with her newborn twins rather than face another lecture on mitosis with a group of Riverside's juveniles. Leonard McCoy insisted on being addressed as “Mister McCoy”, but most of the students just call him McCoy. Jim calls him Bones, after a memorable Anatomy lecture and a spectacular argument during which he immediately decided that he liked Leonard McCoy much more than Helena Coleman.

He's not too sure why Bones showed up in Riverside; all he's ever said is that he drove as far as his car would take him on a hundred and fifty dollars. (Jim did the math and drew a circle around Riverside that would tell him where Bones came from, and narrowed it down only to somewhere south of the Tennessee River and north of the Florida border, where summers are hotter, wetter, but vibrantly green. Bones didn't seem like much of a Florida boy, anyway.) The only other thing he knows is that he used to be married, judging by his bitter attitude about the whole thing, grumbling under his breath when kids in Jim's class explained that they were getting married after graduation. Bones complained about them all the time, whenever Jim came to visit him every day after school, that they were naïve. “No better than talking starry-eyed in a cornfield about forever, like it’s nothing,” he’d told Jim one day. “It’s just not that easy.”

Jim knows it’s not, but neither is a friendship with Leonard McCoy.

“Bones,” he greets with a grin and leans on the counter, unperturbed by the icy look Bones shoots him over the counter. Jim knows he took the job in the bookshop because he needed a summer job that allowed him to stay clear of the heat, even though the school is talking about hiring him full-time as the Biology teacher.

“Can I help you find what you're looking for, or are you going to be harassing me all summer, too?” Bones grits out, closing his book, but Jim only laughs.

“I think I've got it,” he teases and leans against a book display, laughing when it gives out under his weight. “You looked bored.”

“I was reading.”

Jim steals a stool from behind the counter, and leans his elbows on scratched wood. “Come on. Tell me something I don't know. We've got six hours until the shop closes.”

“There's a hell of a lot you don't know, kid,” Bones shoots back at him, flipping pages in his book until he finds the one he's looking for. Jim steals a glance at it and makes a face. It's just a medical textbook.

“You studying to be a doctor?” he asks after some length, shaking his knee and tapping an off-beat rhythm onto the countertop until Bones casually reaches out and flattens his hand over Jim's in a silent warning.

“I was,” is all Bones gives him, but Jim stores the information away with what precious little else he's scrounged together about him.

“Well, why aren't you?” It's a push, he doesn't really expect an answer, but Bones slams the book shut with a heavy thump. For a moment, Jim wonders if he's going to drop it on his exposed hand and chooses prudence over daring, retracting his hand back to rest on his knee.

“Because staying in Atlanta with my ex-wife to go to Emory is the closest thing to hell I can imagine.”

Jim doesn't ask any more questions after that, and Bones doesn't offer any more answers, and at six o'clock he walks home when Bones locks up the shop with Sartre tucked into his back pocket and Bones' last words ringing in his ears.

*

A week later, Jim's finished Sartre, and Kierkegaard, and a lot of Plato's _Republic_ , often reading late into the night in the hope that he'll find something actually illuminating that he can tell Bones. It turns out that most philosophers weren't particularly optimistic about things. The world's a dark cave; people are irredeemably chained to one another to make life hell for one another; nothing intangible is real until you doubt it exists. Jim drops the books on the bookshop's counter on Friday afternoon.

“You recommend depressing shit, Bones.”

“World's not the state fair, kid.” Bones carefully examines each book for damages and disappears into the shelves to put them back. “And it's not shit, watch your mouth about the classics.”

“It's still depressing.”

Bones reemerges from the stacks and hands him another book. “Try this one.”

He sighs and looks at the cover before handing it back to him. “Maybe I'll take a novel this time. No hidden meanings. Just something fun.”

Jim supposes he deserves it when Bones hands him a copy of _The Babysitter's Club._

*

Two weeks after that, the fever in the town hasn’t broken, it’s still hot as hell and dripping with humidity to boot, but they have a routine. Bones doesn't complain that he's there anymore, and Jim reads most of what Bones gives him, expecting that one day he'll explain.

“Are you planning on going to college?” Bones asks one Tuesday afternoon when Jim shows up after Doc Brannon sends everyone home when the temperature climbs over a hundred.

Playing hooky and acing his tests to prove he could keep his GPA high enough to qualify for valedictorian in senior year was all Jim really cared about, but he was still accepted to Ohio State, NYU, Georgetown and the University of Chicago, all of which he applied to for the hell of it. He's accepted one of his offers, but he hasn't even told his mother which one yet. Washington seems a long way from Iowa and he hasn't decided if homesickness is going to keep him there yet. He just shrugs.

“Maybe I will. Maybe I won't.”

“Or maybe you'll stay in Riverside like everyone else,” Bones grouses back in plain disapproval.

“Or that, too,” Jim only grins and takes it as an invitation to ask a question this time. “You ever going to get married again, Bones?”

The look Bones shoots him is so lethal that Jim laughs, and Bones starts swearing at him in a thick drawl and incoherent colloquialisms.

“If you go to college, I'll get married again,” he finally spits back at him and Jim looks thoughtful for a minute.

“Deal, you old cuss.” He sticks out his hand and grins incorrigibly at him.

Bones just starts swearing again.

*

Jim invites himself for a walk back to the apartment Bones rents above the hardware store when he runs into him in the bread aisle at the grocery store. Bones thrusts one of the bags at his chest, but Jim doesn't complain, even though he's carrying all the heavy stuff.

“Suzanne and Phil are getting married,” he announces, the real reason he came to see Bones tonight, though Bones is always good company, even when he's grumpy like always. “This weekend, actually. They went to get their license this morning in Washington.”

“Well, good on them,” Bones complains and struggles to jab his key into the lock on his door. “Couple of morons, if you ask me. Getting married is like asking for hell.”

Jim breezes past him into the apartment and sets the heavy bag on the counter. “I think I want to get married someday,” he admits and starts unpacking things. Milk next to the cheese, bread on the counter, toothpaste and shaving cream waiting to be taken to the bathroom. For a minute, Jim wonders if Bones has always done this for himself, or if his wife ever lined up his things on the counter for him to put away when they were still dating, and whether anyone will ever care enough to banter with Jim while unpacking groceries.

Bones scoffs, and Jim shakes off the thoughts with a quiet, _whoa_. Marriage is a long way away for him, if not for everyone else he graduated with; people like Phil and Suzanne. He's screwed around a lot, and his motivation for applying to college in his junior year was entirely for the sake of getting laid as often as possible. He isn't sure he's willing to even joke about tying himself down and giving that up, and yet...

“Kids like you are all morons,” Bones continues, and Jim jerks back to reality while handing the eggs across the kitchen to him. “You go out to the middle of nowhere and fuck and make promises, and then you go and get _married_ , like it's not hard as hell to live like that for a few years, let alone the rest of your lives.” He slams the refrigerator door closed and turns around. “Eternity is a lot longer and harder than kids think it is.”

“I think you're bitter.” Jim puts the cereal on top of the fridge and leans against it, too close to Bones to do anything but make him uncomfortable, which is fine with Jim. There's a lot of things he doesn't know about McCoy, things he wishes he did, more than where he went to college and what he studied. All he knows is what he’s told him, or what he’s deduced, like that Bones was nineteen when he got married.

“Don't pander to me, kid. Half of all marriages end up imploding and falling apart.”

“And half of them don't,” Jim counters, stealing a beer from the fridge as soon as Bones moves away from it. He twists off the lid and points the open mouth at Bones. “So maybe it’s worth it to try.”

Bones ignores him and pours himself a glass of juice instead of the bourbon Jim saw in the cabinet. “It wasn't worth it. It's _not_ worth it. It'll never be worth it.”

“Thanks for the lesson in tenses. I'll send you a wedding invitation one day.” Jim grins at him and disappears into the living room to turn on the TV. When he's stretched out over the couch cushions, he looks back toward the kitchen as Bones emerges again, his juice looking suspiciously spiked.

*

The marriage rate is going down, Jim finds out when he does a little Google researching. The divorce rate was over half around the turn of the millennium, but it's just under fifty percent now, so it’s going down too. Iowa legalized gay marriage the spring before, when Jim was still a junior, and he remembers getting drunk and earnestly proposing to John Scott, the running back on the football team. (John, who had drunk far less than Jim, had politely refused.)

He finds a wedding announcement in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution for Leonard Horatio McCoy and Jocelyn Anne Darnell from four years before. He also finds a record of divorce dating two and a half years after the wedding announcement, and a second wedding announcement, three days before Bones showed up in Riverside, for a Clay Robert Treadway and Jocelyn Darnell McCoy. After that, he goes to bed and stares at the ceiling for hours, wondering how badly a heart can be broken, how long it takes to come together again.

*

“You left your sunglasses at my apartment,” Bones tells him, thrusting them toward Jim’s chest when he answers the door. Behind him, his mother is pacing circles into the carpet while on the phone with the guy she’s been on a few dates with. Jim’s gotten the impression that it’s pretty serious, and maybe a _few_ dates is more like a dozen, so it’s just as likely that his mom is having sex again if the fact that she doesn’t always come home afterward is any indication.

“How’d you know where I live?” he asks, grinning so broadly that his face hurts, but he carefully closes the door behind him to shut out his mother’s hushed excitement.

“Just had to ask anyone in town where the biggest trouble maker lives. You want them back or not?” He waves them at Jim again, and this time Jim takes them.

He leans against the doorframe and crosses his arms. It’s hot, but Jim isn’t as bothered as Bones seems to be, a little red-faced and grumpier than ever. “You could have waited for me to come see you again. It’s practically like clockwork now.”

“I wasn’t going to keep them at work until you decided to grace me with your presence.” When he turns around and starts to leave, Jim catches his shoulder and grins at him again.

“Stick around, Bones. I’m pretty sure Mom’s heading out, the Cubs are playing tonight, Sam’s visiting his girlfriend. We can order pizza and you can go get some beer and we can fall asleep on the couch.” Jim is sure that he’s charming enough that there’s no way Bones can refuse, but his expression is flat and unimpressed.

“No.”

“Is that a no, you won’t buy me beer? Because I guess I can respect that, it’s pretty decent of you to be an upstanding citizen.”

“I mean no, I’m—”

The door swings open and Winona Kirk looks between them and breathes out her relief. “Oh, good, you’ll have company, Jim. I’m going out tonight, I hope you don’t mind. I felt bad leaving you alone.”

Jim looks over at Bones expectantly, and manages not to look too smug when Winona disappears back into the house to get ready.

“You’re not going to disappoint my mom and leave me all by myself now, are you?”

Bones rolls his eyes and pushes past him into the house. “If I didn’t know better, I’d think you orchestrated that. And I’m not buying you beer.”

Jim thinks that’s good enough, and he’s already ordered pizza and crashed on the couch when his mother waves on her way out the door, changing her earrings for the third time and telling him not to wait up for her. Bones is sitting on the farthest corner of the couch, as far from Jim as he can get, but even that doesn’t bother him all that much. It’s just the way Bones is.

They’re halfway through the fifth inning when Bones sighs and sets his soda back on the table next to his plate. “You were right about one thing. I could have waited until you showed up like a bad penny again to give you the sunglasses, but—”

“Is this the part where you confess undying love for me? Because you’ve never said anything about it before, and I didn’t even know you were really into guys.”

Bones reaches out and smacks his leg, ignoring Jim’s squawk of protest. “There’s a lot you don’t know about me. Never mind.”

“Well, fine. Tell me something I don’t know about you.” Jim turns over onto his stomach, which is only a bad idea because he ate half the pizza on his own (Bones had better self-control, and Jim resents him for it a little).

“I’d never gone more than a state away from home my whole life before I came here.” Bones is staring at him with an unreadable expression, but Jim doesn’t betray his curiosity yet, not unless Bones plans to keep the rest of it to himself.

“Yeah?”

“You know what? Forget it.” He rolls back over and stares at the game with all the air of someone who isn’t actually paying attention.

“It won’t kill you to talk about yourself, Bones. So you got married and you got your heart broken—”

“I said forget it,” he interrupts him abruptly, but his cheeks are pink and Jim rolls onto his side, facing the TV, and he doesn’t press the issue. Finally, he inhales again. “I told myself that I wouldn’t ever go back anywhere I’d ever been before, but it’s nearly been a year now and I haven’t left Iowa, and I’m not sure I want to when it’s time to move to Baltimore.”

“Baltimore?” he echoes and stares blankly at the screen, as if it might give him the answers he wants when Bones refuses them.

“Johns Hopkins,” he explains quietly. “I’m starting to get cold feet.”

Jim doesn’t say anything to that at first. There’s a lot more to Bones than a bad divorce and an old ache, otherwise he wouldn’t be nearly as interested, but he forgets sometimes that his problems aren’t as straightforward as he’d like them to be. Finally, he reaches out and nudges Bones with his fist.

“My turn. Something you don’t know about me. I’m going to Georgetown in August.”

“Bullshit.” He rolls his eyes where Jim can see and looks back at the game like he’s actually paying attention, except Jim knows he isn’t. “You can’t leave me here.”

“Well, don’t get cold feet,” Jim retorts, but then he looks pensive a minute and grabs their plates. “We’ll get out of here together if I have to stuff you in my suitcase, Bones. That’s a promise.”

Bones grumbles incoherently, but when he looks up at Jim, his lips are fighting a smile.

*

Jim appears in the window of the bookshop three minutes before seven o'clock, when Bones is already locking up the register and lifting his bag from behind the counter. He can't read lips, but he can recognize the eyeroll he earns from as far away as he is. He sped all the way from Doc Brannon's, ignoring speed limits and the messages on his phone from his mother _and_ his brother instructing him to be home for dinner at seven thirty sharp. Mom's boyfriend is coming over, but Bones is more important.

He presses the button on his phone to silence it again when Bones closes the shop with a final jingle from the broken bell.

“Your mom was in here earlier. She told me I should send you home if I see you,” Bones tells him with a lifted eyebrow that says only that he's only planning on delivering the message, not enforcing it. Jim's smile is infectious, and even though Bones gives a short, irritated sigh, he leans against the sun-warm glass of the display window.

“I've got other plans for tonight.”

“Better get to them,” Bones counters and tucks the keys into his pocket, and Jim knows he's just being ornery for the sake of it; he knows that Jim's plans include him.

“Come on. I know you're starving. I grabbed some stuff from Della's on the way from work. It's in the truck.”

They're halfway out of town when Jim's phone rings again and Bones gets to it before him, his fingers hovering over the Talk key. “It's your mom, Jim.”

“Let her keep calling,” he tells him and arches with both hands on the wheel, stretching with a satisfied moan. “I told her I wasn't coming last night.”

“Because you were planning on kidnapping me.” Bones is sulking, but he isn't complaining about the barbeque sandwich Jim got him, pickles and all, exactly how he likes.

“I bought you dinner. It's fucking _romantic._ ”

Bones chokes, and if it's because of Jim's declaration or because he just hit the biggest pothole in Washington county, Jim doesn't really care. He whips off onto a side road and slows to a crawl, then a stop when he finds the right break in the endless cornfields.

“Come on,” he grins, grabbing his sandwich and the potato salad and jumping into the bed of the truck. “I've got a blanket.”

Bones folds his arms when he slams the door behind him and looks out across the endless stretch of green stalks tinged rusty in the sunset. Jim watches him and sighs heavily, ready to tell him to just come up anyway, but Bones is already climbing over the edge of the truck and spreading out Jim's quilt, the patchwork one his mother made when she was pregnant with Sam. When he’s next to Jim, he steals one of his pickles and lies back until he’s facing the darkening twilight sky and the stars coming out, far enough from town and humanity that they’re clear and bright.

“Why did you bring me out here anyway?”

“You seemed like you could use a trip out of town the other day,” Jim lies smoothly, because he really brought him here to figure Bones out a little more and maybe prove a point. There’s no telling if Bones will actually open up to him more than he already has—and that’s already more than he’s dared to disclose to anyone else in Riverside.

“So I’m a little homesick,” Bones tells him, turning his face toward him. “I didn’t exactly expect that I’d end up in the middle of nowhere selling books.”

“Instead of med school, right?” Jim sets aside the container of potato salad and stretches out next to him. “Guess I can’t blame you.”

“There’s a lot of things I thought I’d be doing right now, and more than just med school. I haven’t given that up yet.” He’s silent for another moment, and then sighs like something creaking before breaking in half. “I wanted to have kids one day, after med school. We talked about it, she and I, just like this. Sat in the middle of the soccer field and talked about spending our lives together, with kids and mortgages and a big garden. I went off to Ole Miss and she stayed to go to UGA with her friends, and after a year we talked about it some more. Missed each other too much, so she transferred and we got married.”

“Bones…”

“Shut up and let me finish,” he grunts at him and rests his hand over his eyes, his accent thickening, but he’s on a roll and Jim doesn’t know if he really wants to stop him. “You ought to know this if you’re gonna run off and get married. It’s not easy, it’s _hell_ , even when you really love someone. You’ll get your heart broken every day and everyone will expect you to keep on going, and then they’re so disappointed when you don’t do it right and then when you just can’t do it anymore. Mom yelled until she hyperventilated when I told her I was getting a divorce, and Dad told me I was walking away from my responsibility as a man, so it’s not just you that’s going to be disappointed if you throw in the towel. There’s a whole life you thought you’d live that you’re giving up, and then you’ve got to find out where you’re going next. It wrecks your whole life.”

“You’re talking about divorce, Bones, not marriage.” Jim rolls onto his side and props himself up on his elbow.

“Same damn thing. Divorce is just when you can’t keep up the charade anymore. No one has a happy marriage all the time.” He turns his attention back to the sky and Jim laughs.

“No one has a happy life all the time, either, and the suicide rate isn’t hovering just below half,” he quips and laughs again when Bones grunts at him.

“Marriage is willing torture. No one ever proposed life to someone else.”

“You’re a pessimist. And don’t say you’re a realist, I already read that depressing shit you gave me. Realism is accepting that fifty-fifty’s as good as it gets in life and those odds aren’t so bad. I've done dumber stuff on worse than fifty percent chance of success.”

“Well, take your chances and don’t say I didn’t give you fair warning.”

That seems to be the end of the conversation as far as Bones is concerned, but Jim hums to himself for a few minutes, and when Bones inhales to tell him to shut up, he looks back down at him as seriously as he can, because he means what he’s going to say and he needs Bones to know that.

“Let’s get married, then.”

Bones cracks an eye at him, his eyebrows wrinkled with irritation. “And what, prove a point?”

“Yeah, something like that,” Jim says cheerfully, mostly because Bones hasn’t punched him for it. “Except I’m serious.”

“I’m not marrying somebody I haven’t even kissed yet.”

“That can be arranged.” Jim doesn’t give him a chance to protest before he leans in and captures him in a clumsy kiss, one hand fumbling for grip behind his ear. There’s a long second when Bones doesn’t move, but then his chapped lips part for Jim and when he tries to break away, sucking in a breath to say something, Jim drags him back down into the kiss, patient and slow and thorough. His hand pushes away the t-shirt Bones is wearing and his work-rough thumb flicks over his nipple. This time, when Bones breaks for a gasp of warm night air, Jim lets him go, grinning to himself. “So, now that’s out of the way, what do you think?”

“I’m not marrying somebody I barely know,” Bones deadpans, but his lips are a little swollen and his breaths are puffing hard against Jim’s lips, and if that’s as much victory as Jim can going to get tonight, he’ll take it.

“That can also be arranged,” he tells him and rolls onto his back to stare at the stars, allowing a moment of silence before moving into mundane chatter again.

*

The next morning, nothing’s changed about their relationship and Jim goes to work and Bones goes for a run. That evening, he meets Bones at work for the last couple hours of his shift and they leave together and nothing’s changed. The next day, and the next week, and the weeks after that, they make out in Jim’s truck sometimes and fumble awkwardly on Bones’ couch and spend long nights talking about the things they don’t know about each other. Jim has a scar on the back of his head covered by the rest of his hair from getting hit over the head with a two-by-four by his brother. Bones wanted siblings his whole life. Both of them remember their sixth birthdays and the first wedding they ever went to.

Nothing changes, but Jim thinks Bones looks happier.

*

“You know,” Bones tells him one night, while opening the door to his apartment with a bourbon in one hand and a scowl on his face. “You could call me some nights. We don’t have to be around each other _all the time._ ”

“Yeah, but you’re not that far from the house, so it seems like a waste,” Jim explains, cheerfully stealing his bourbon right out of his hand while Bones locks the door. “And I’m not a pining teenager.”

“Take a good look at yourself,” he snorts and takes his bourbon back from Jim, who’s just finished most of it. “What did you come over here for?”

Jim looks deliberately pained when he flops onto the couch. “Just to _see_ you. I like being around you, Bones. Can’t imagine why, but I do.”

“Smartass. Move over.” Bones sits down next to him and flips off the TV, closing his eyes.

“I’m leaving on the fifteenth,” Jim announces, the real reason he came over here. Somehow, texting about the move the next month isn’t good enough, and talking on the phone isn’t personal enough when Sam’s in the other room and his mom’s in the kitchen on the phone with her boyfriend, talking about the future. “All ready to move into the dorms.”

“I paid for an apartment in Baltimore,” Bones tells him and finishes the bourbon, but he doesn’t get up to refill the glass. “I’m supposed to move on the eighteenth.”

Jim hesitates, it’s too good to be true, but he looks at Bones seriously. “So, we’re driving down together, right?”

“As long as you don’t mind two days driving in my car.” He finally stands up and heads back into the kitchen, and returns with a beer in each hand. Bones hands one of them over to Jim when he sits down and opens his own. “Have you told your mother yet?”

“She took it pretty well,” Jim lies, because he hasn’t actually said a word to his mother, except that he’s going to go to college in the fall. He knows it worries her, and he knows it’s not exactly right, but admitting it to her would be too much like letting go, and for all his bravado, Jim is actually going to miss Riverside. He knows he needs to say something in the next few days, but it’s hard to force himself to do it when he knows that she might cry and then it’ll just be a mess, complete with baby pictures and rambling memories of a father he never met.

“Liar,” Bones deadpans and takes a drink of beer. “You should tell her. We’re leaving in a few weeks. I bet you haven’t even started packing.”

“Of course not. I’ve got _a few weeks_. Plenty of time.”

If Bones intends to say anything to chastise him, he keeps his mouth shut and just turns back to his beer, staring at the floor. “Something you don’t know,” he begins, but Jim puts his beer on the table and climbs into his lap.

“There’s nothing you could tell me now that would surprise me, Bones,” he interrupts and kisses him, unhesitant, unafraid.

“Would it surprise you if I told you that you’re not the first guy I’ve laid a hand on?”

It’s surprising, but Jim doesn’t show it when he deepens the kiss, parting his lips and urging Bones’ apart with a brush of his tongue. His body is thrumming with electric joy, pulsing through him with every rush of blood from his thumping heart, a chanting rhythm for wanting him, for wanting this, the only thing that’s felt like surrender. After an eternity in suspension, Bones moves, slips the nerves holding him back and cards his fingers through Jim’s hair, mouthing the shapes of words against his lips.

“I want this,” he sighs. Jim’s blood sparks at the words and it’s the last thing either of them needs to say before their clothes fall to the living room floor and Bones pushes Jim down into the cushions. His eyes are blown and curious, surprised at his own audacity, but Jim encourages him silently, pressing his lips together and tracing the bumpy contour of Bones’ spine with his fingers. He’s slept with other guys—John Scott wasn’t the only boy he’s ever been interested in—but there was never time to talk with them, to feel along them and decide what his favorite part is. None of them have ever known what Bones knows about him, not even a fraction. Though it would have scared him before that anyone knows him so well, that he could hurt anyone by what he knows of them, Bones is different, with his drawl and the touch of autumn all over him; the end of summer hopes that have nothing to do with school or growing up hovering around him like a curse.

Bones is the one who whimpers when their cocks brush, and for a frightened moment, Jim realizes that he might have fooled around with another man, he’s never done this, and he hasn’t been with anyone since his ex. They haven’t gone too far yet, though, because Bones sighs blissfully then and arcs down against him. Jim guides his hand over them and Bones comes first, but not too soon, because Jim adds his moan to their chorus when he comes over their chests.

Afterward, Jim doesn’t leave, and Bones doesn’t ask him to. They stay twined together for a long time, drifting in and out, taking turns to watch the other, until Bones climbs off and leads him back to the bedroom. Bones is asleep almost instantly, but Jim moves his hair and kisses his ear, quietly whispering that he loves him, and another proposal into his ear.

He’s not disappointed that Bones didn’t hear him, though some part of him really expected he’d hear, and, miraculously, change his mind.

*

Jim keeps a tally of his proposals in the back of one of Bones’ books.

When he’s refused for the seventh time, with a roll of eyes and a soft curse under his breath, Jim makes his mark and stares at the line for a few long, long moments, waiting for the right answer. When it doesn’t come immediately, he closes the book, replaces it on the shelf, and retires to his own bed for the night. He doesn’t know everything about Bones’ life before Riverside, only what he’s been told, though he wants to know more, and he’s sure that’s an obstacle.

Two hours later, Jim is still awake, and he’s suddenly sure of one thing: he doesn’t have to know everything, and it’s _okay_ if he doesn’t.

*

“I don’t get your fixation on getting married,” Bones sighs and leans against the counter again, his anatomy book abandoned from the moment Jim walked through the door. “It’s not the storybook thing you think it is.”

Jim emerges from the back room with a cup of coffee in Bones’ Ole Miss mug and shrugs, sipping at it mindlessly. “I know that’s what _you_ think, but I don’t really think of it that way in the first place.” When he’s leaning against the counter, their noses inches apart, he smiles as charmingly as possible.

“You really want to marry me,” Bones observes and pulls away, sitting in his chair and looking as if this is actually a surprise to him, something that’s never really occurred to him after ten proposals.

“I like you, Bones. We get along better than all the girlfriends and boyfriends I’ve ever had, you can’t surprise me, you don’t seem to mind being around me—that’s kind of important, by the way.”

“It’s more than that,” Bones tells him, but the fervor is gone from his voice, the usual vehemence while he explains why marrying Jim is a bad idea for him.

“I know all I need to know about you,” Jim laughs and drinks deeply from the cup. “All that I need to know that I want to marry you, anyway.” When he leans over the counter and kisses him, slow and sweet, his chest bursts with pride as Bones softens against his mouth.

“There’s a lot to me you don’t know, you know,” he murmurs, but Jim doesn’t care. He doesn’t say so, just pushes impatiently into another kiss.

“Doesn’t matter, Bones. I want to spend a long time finding out about those things. It’ll be like an adventure.”

“Adventures aren’t always good, kid.” Bones is serious, but Jim rolls his eyes.

“Come on, Bones. Marry me, it’ll be fun.” By now, he knows to expect the refusal, but not the slow, rumbling laugh that precedes Bones’ voice when he takes another kiss from Jim.

“No,” Bones laughs, but his eyes are bright and he’s leaning closer still for another kiss, so Jim is all but sure it’s almost a yes.

*

The fifteenth creeps up on Jim, even though Bones warns him nearly every day that he needs to finish packing so they know what kind of room they have in his car for the trip. Bones didn’t come to Riverside with very much, and the only thing he seems inclined to take with him is a box of new books, his clothes, and another box of odds and ends from his apartment that he’ll need in the new one. Jim throws his clothes into an old, plastic trunk that Sam used in college and uses his father’s old Army rucksack for a few other things. Everything else, he decides, doesn’t really matter.

He says goodbye to his mother while Bones loads up the rest of his things into the car, fitting everything just into place the way Jim doesn’t care to bother with. Winona doesn’t cry until he grins at her and tells her he’ll write emails, and then she just grabs his shoulders and hugs him tightly.

“Don’t get in any trouble,” she warns him firmly, her thumbs pressed gently into his shoulders. “I can’t believe you didn’t say anything to—”

“I didn’t want you to think I’d get in trouble,” Jim interrupts and hugs her again, setting off another shoulder-shaking cry. “Mom, I’m taking Bones with me. What kind of trouble can I possibly get into?”

Winona starts laughing then, and when she hugs Bones goodbye, she spends a few, long minutes talking to him by the car, though Jim is too distracted by Sam to catch any of their words.

Then they’re gone, like that, waving out windows to Riverside and the life Jim’s lived all his life—Bones’ life for the last year. Both are on to something new that they only understand on an abstract level, and Jim assumes that Bones is just lost in thought, considering the same things, when he doesn’t say anything but to ask Jim if he’s got his buckle on.

They’re ten miles out of town when Bones speaks again, just as Jim is about to ask him if he wants to talk, or if he should put on some music. He takes a tell-tale breath three times before Jim finally sighs and crosses his arms.

“Did you forget something?”

Bones shakes his head and pulls off to the side of the road. “I want to stop in Washington. The county seat, not the one we’re going to anyway.”

Jim clears his throat and tries not to look too perplexed, but Bones’ forehead is wrinkled in thought and Jim can’t really handle not knowing what’s going through his head. “Any particular reason?”

Instead of answering, Bones turns the car back onto the road and keeps driving toward Washington, his knee jangling with nerves the entire time. Jim’s been to Washington more times than he can count in his life, and he knows the town as well as Riverside, but when Bones parks across the street from the courthouse, Jim wonders if there’s something about the town that he doesn’t know.

“Jim,” he begins when he shifts the car into park, but he keeps staring ahead and his hands don’t move off the steering wheel. “Do you want to get married?”

Comprehension comes crashing down over Jim; the courthouse, Bones’ distance, everything only makes sense in the light of that question. “Is that a serious question?” he stammers out, and of course it is, there’s no way it couldn’t be serious. It’s _Bones_ , and for a summer’s worth of meaningful bonding, he’s still the same scowling, serious grump that he’s been since he came to Riverside.

“Okay, don’t say anything until I’m done, all right? We made a deal at the beginning of the summer, and I know it was a joke, but it’s not anymore, because you’re going to college and I’m… not the same as I was then. You’ve given me plenty of time to think about it since that first damn stupid—that first time you proposed.” Bones shakes his head when he corrects himself and finally releases the steering wheel. “I _know_ why people wait to get married. Hell, I wish I’d waited to get married the first time, because there are things I wish I’d known before I married her. I wish I’d known she was going to outgrow me, and I wish I’d known I wasn’t going to get over her as easily as she got over me. But people wait because they want to make sure they know enough about someone else to know if they want to find out the rest. There’s not much about me you don’t already know, Jim and here’s all that’s left. You can take it or leave it and I won’t let it make that much of a difference to me.”

“Bones,” Jim tries to interrupt, but Bones shakes his head and turns to look at him, holds out his hand for Jim to take, which he does, hesitantly.

“Listen, okay? I don’t eat fish because I don’t eat anything that lives in its own shit. I want to have three kids, I’m never going to get along with my parents the way I did before I got divorced, and I’m too stubborn to try to rebuild that bridge. I drink too much sometimes when I want to relax, and I never learn that it gives me a headache from hell. Other than that, there’s not really much else to me, and if you can live with that for however long you decide you want to be married to me, then that’s enough for me, too.”

“Bones, I—” Jim squeezes his hand tightly and swallows, but Bones interrupts him again.

“Jim, _listen_ to me. If you’re _sure_ about this, then we’ll do it.”

“Bones!” He laughs, leans over the cup holders and kisses him, brushing the calloused pad of his thumb over the firm line of his jaw, no more certain of this than he’s been for anything else, but the risk outweighs the consequences of walking away like it’s nothing he wants. “I’m sure.”

*

For all the hype everyone makes about getting married, Jim thinks that it’s probably the most boring thing he’s done since he waited in line for two hours at the DMV to get his driver’s license, which is required for the marriage license. Bones looks like he’s going to puke the whole time they’re in line, and when the woman behind the desk asks him if he’s ever been married, Jim grabs his hand in what he knows looks like comforting reassurance, but he meant it as insurance to keep Bones from bolting.

They don’t leave Iowa until that night because news travels fast in Riverside, and though Jim calls a friend in Washington to witness for them, his mother leaves no fewer than seven voicemails on his phone until Bones finally persuades him to answer the damn thing and prevent her from having a heart attack.

They do leave, though, exhausted and blissful, with all their paperwork in order and matching rings and each other, and not much else.

*

Bones has his apartment in Baltimore and they play house there on the weekends, after classes are over for the week. Jim parties, but only on the nights that Bones is in DC, sharing his narrow bunk and complaining in the morning that his back hurts. They always spend the next morning wandering the crowded streets nearby, looking for breakfast, sometimes skipping classes to look for some hidden treasure they’ve never encountered before. He takes the commuter train to Baltimore most Friday afternoons with other young men, eager in their excitement to see wives they left outside the city, homes and families and the things they live for. Jim’s no different with his overgrown crew cut and earbuds, though they’ll never know it unless they look to his left hand and the slim band gleaming in the low light.

They study in what feels like endless sessions and walk the Potomac in springtime to talk about the future while the city is in bloom, breathtakingly full of hope. Bones works long hours at the hospital and Jim calls his mother once a week, haunting Bones’ apartment because it’s enough to be around the shadowed impressions of him, and it’s not what Jim imagined for himself, though he thought of a wild future without an anchor to settle his spirit. It’s so much more subdued, fragile in an unsure world threatening to break it like anyone else, but when he wakes up in the night with Bones sprawled out beside him in his scrubs, it’s okay that they’ll never know for sure what will happen to them in the future. It’s enough.

It’s enough.


End file.
